The old Kaiser Steel Co. could be called a classic victim of the business excesses of the 1980s. Savvy investors walked into a vulnerable company and waltzed away with more money than they had brought; the company's assets were leveraged, exchanged and liquidated, and a debt-crippled company limped into bankruptcy court, its pockets bulging with lawyers' bills.

The old Kaiser Steel Co. could be called a classic victim of the business excesses of the 1980s. Savvy investors walked into a vulnerable company and waltzed away with more money than they had brought; the company's assets were leveraged, exchanged and liquidated, and a debt-crippled company limped into bankruptcy court, its pockets bulging with lawyers' bills.

A group of former Kaiser Steel Co. workers has filed a multimillion-dollar class-action suit against Wall Street speculator Ivan Boesky and other stockholders of the steel company, charging them with a series of unlawful transactions resulting in Kaiser's insolvency, which left them without benefits. The suit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, claims Boesky and the others acted as "corporate raiders" in a leveraged buy-out of the company and then diverted the assets to their own use.

Kaiser Steel Receives Title to California Acreage: Kaiser Steel Resources Inc., in proceedings Wednesday before Judge Charles Matheson of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Denver, reached a settlement that will give the company title to 213 acres adjacent to the former Kaiser steel mill near Fontana. The mill was shut down in the early 1980s when the company filed for bankruptcy court protection. Kaiser Steel Resources, the successor company to Kaiser Steel Co.

Residents of Desert Center in Riverside County have angrily rejected the parole of Charles Rothenberg to a nearby prison facility, indicating the kind of reception that may loom this winter for the father imprisoned for setting his son afire 6 1/2 years ago in Buena Park.

Officials at the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace in Yorba Linda were taken aback this year when Bill Miller of Corona offered his enormous collection of Johnny Cash memorabilia for an exhibit. The Elvis-Nixon connection has been well-publicized, but Johnny Cash, too? "Johnny Cash performed for five U.S.

Residents of a Riverside County desert hamlet have angrily rejected the idea that Charles Rothenberg, who set fire to his son in Buena Park, be paroled to a nearby ghost town. The unusual vote in Desert Center was reminiscent of the battle over the 1987 parole of another notorious state inmate, Lawrence Singleton, convicted of raping a teen-age girl and hacking off her forearms with an ax.

The Southern California Assn. of Governments has begun a study to find out if it is feasible to haul trash by rail from the San Gabriel Valley to disposal sites in remote desert areas. Gill V. Hicks, who is heading the study for the regional planning agency, said the first phase, compiling information about the area's future trash disposal needs, will be completed by the end of this month.

The small talk at the lunch counter of the Desert Center Cafe grew as hot as the coffee steaming from the plastic mugs Thursday morning. "I tell you," snapped Kitty Morris, the cafe's middle-aged waitress, as she poured fresh coffee into the cups of her friends, Anita Harley and Jim Tomlinson. "I don't wanna be known as the biggest dumping ground in the world."

Faced with a shortage of priests in one of the fastest-growing regions in the nation, the Roman Catholic diocese of San Bernardino is becoming a national leader in using lay Catholics, nuns and permanent deacons to run parishes and meet the spiritual needs of its flock.

Fifty years ago, internationally acclaimed woodworker Sam Maloof cleared a piece of a citrus orchard north of what is now Ontario International Airport in San Bernardino County. Because money was scarce, he built an undistinguished, flat-roofed, 800-square-foot frame cottage, not unlike countless other crowded little starter houses that went up in tracts across Southern California after World War II.